we’re so back (but i will be making a separate post for my circumstances)
It’s like watching the history of internet filesharing and warez from the 90s on a speedrun. LW happened to be the most populous instance by chance, and the nature of federated network means the admins can get legally held liable for contents they didn’t choose nor wanted to host, because all it takes is another federated server going rogue.
Sure, freedom of speech is fundamental. But it’s a hard place between “saving yourself from financial and legal troubles” and “betraying the (vaguely defined) principles”. When the crowd is shouting “freedom of speech”, they don’t just want a nice speech for an announcement; they want the admins become a martyr for the cause. And shit, what for? For some vague internet fame?
Had lemmy.ml become the largest instance, we would have potentially watched this unfold on lemmy devs themselves. Knowing their political affiliations, it might have turned into a different scenario. Legal threats might have been rebutted in an open way that even pleased the “freeze peach” crowd despite the “tankie” accusations. Perhaps all the extra pressure and legal threats meant Lemmy development come to a halt and slowly decline. But no one knows, really.
I don’t condone nor condemn LW or its staff. I wish they didn’t have to carry the baggage of becoming the guinea pig of this ongoing experiment.
I think people also for some reason think they are entitled to free speech, a.k.a. they can do whatever they want, and virtually any space they please. All it tells me is they lack a fundamental grasp of what the first amendment actually is and what it guarantees. I think they also forget the Internet operates outside of the US. 
I agree however I’d like to add that I do see piracy as being, at least partially, a social movement. Perhaps it isn’t apparent to everyone, or right now, and maybe it’ll never become anything, but still we should respect that there are different points of view on topics such as copyright. So I understand when people call it censoring when they have that point of view.
I just think vague gestures (not your doing) to someone’s personal interpretation of what free-speech is, which is generally “I should suffer no consequences for anything I say or do,“ hits a wall when it comes to asking somebody to host conversations and possible links to pirated content on their own servers. Especially when they are doing it on their own dime as a hobby and don’t have a legal team to protect them from the feds.
